Labour migration : language problems and occupational safety

Abstract

Citizens of Central and Eastern Europe, very often called ‘cheap labor force’, turned out to be a gift for a quickly developing Norwegian economy in recent years. That is why immigration from those countries was the largest. The problem of communication and languages came together with migrants. New immigrants mostly do not know Norwegian or English language. Men were mostly engaged in the construction sector and women in the cleaning sector. In those sectors relevant education was not required. Therefore, the problem turned out later: many of them do not have any language knowledge or knowledge of basic rules of safety and routines at the workplace. Communication at work turned out to be mainly based on gestures and body language. Before the thesis was finally drafted the author read in one of the newspapers about another accident at one of the construction sites in Stavanger. This time the event ended tragically because the worker died. The worker came to Norway, very shortly before his death. He was employed by employment agencies and worked as a construction builder. He didn’t understand that it was forbidden to pass some areas at the construction sites as these were not secured. Did he receive any instructions training about safety rules in his own language? The answer to this question is unknown. This ensured the author of this paper that the choice of the subject was right. The author decided to focus on some aspects while working on the design of the thesis. In the first part author decided to focus on general issues and the layout. Here the author of the research thesis will try to define the research problem. The author also provides an overview of comparative statistics between the Baltic States, Poland and Norway. In this part especially interesting position is comparing power parity between Norway and Poland. The author will also present an overview of the literature and the lay-out of thesis. The next step will be identification of the field of the research. The theoretical overview will help us to answer for questions: what is exactly health and safety? What kind of relation is there between lack of communication and dangers in health and safety regulations? Here, as well, I will try to describe the actual status of migration phenomena based on specific statistical data. This will help to identify and generally understand the group of our research (interviewee) before I focus on the concrete group. That means that before I make a test, I would like to know as much as possible about the test objects. ...